GrowingWildFarm https://growingwildfarm.com
place and plant driven herbal goodsSat, 25 Aug 2018 05:20:33 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://growingwildfarm.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/cropped-brunch-1.png?w=32GrowingWildFarm https://growingwildfarm.com
3232I literally may have forgotten how to do this.https://growingwildfarm.com/2017/07/11/i-literally-may-have-forgotten-how-to-do-this/
https://growingwildfarm.com/2017/07/11/i-literally-may-have-forgotten-how-to-do-this/#respondTue, 11 Jul 2017 19:10:56 +0000http://thegrowingwild.com/?p=2808Continue reading I literally may have forgotten how to do this.]]>Well, hello dear old blog. I have really enjoyed not having to fiddle with you, truly. Something about the process of getting a blog post up and tinkering with changes is too much computer and headache than just the beauty of the words, the balance for a while just tipped between knowing how long it would take sitting here with not writing work versus being able to share the bits and pieces appropriate for this form, the dailies. I have enjoyed using Instagram as a mini-blog of sorts, but let’s get real; we can’t fit all our stories into a picture and a tiny box and our pocket. They need room and I need space.

My two younger children are at a friend’s for the morning so that I can work. I am ostensibly trying to make some money again out here on the farm, in about twenty directions, none of which have really stuck enough to become a real business yet. Still, instead of heading straight to it, to a late planting of beans that I hope will survive the deer nibbles, to some fall crop seeding, to another bit of elderflower gathering for elixir, to cutting back the catnip and oregano, to weeding, always weeding, and getting some really pretty basil potted up into boxes, to this farm that I love and that keeps me grounded, connected, inspired, and holy, I opened WordPress. Because what is burning inside my brain all the time is the way life continues to coalesce into narrative, so deeply beautiful, impossibly meaningful. Because if I die tomorrow, as the saying goes, I want to have given these pockets of madness that are my human experience back in form to this embodied experiment of life.

Last year stripped us bare. Us, the collective us, all of us, individually. At least it tried to. In a post everything world, we have two choices. Continue to let the crumbs fall where they rightfully should, or decide with all our might to co-create a wildly better world.

And somehow, for me, I know that weaving stories that build bridges, between the land and the people and people and their innermost selves, is my way to make reparations, to help repair. To heal. To encourage the remembrance and radical connection necessary to wiggle through this wormhole we have been offered.

So, I will see how this little extra room fits for now, this morning at least. To be growing always, and wild, means being okay with both constant imagining and continued surrender. The ego quiets, the mind clears, the heart pumps, and one step in front of the other, you let your brambly, prickly, weedy, purposefully lovely self make your medicine and you share it.

Because truly the world is burning right now, and we are all standing in the fire. I choose now to soften all the way, to bare myself, open wide, and write it all down to make sure we know it is okay. That we are okay. More than okay, we are divine. We will always rise from the ashes.

It is nearly summer solstice. We, our family, here on this farm, are traveling through this season without farming for an income any longer. We are traveling around the circle of the seasons and so much is the same while so much is different.The intense push, hard in all the ways, that last season gave us to finally let that business go, that one-time dream, one-time call, has settled. The egos have survived, even when they thought they might not. Letting go has usually been something I feel I do so gracefully. But this was hard. Really hard.

Mostly because we always think we have to be something. We were farmers. We were farmers for our community. It was a big part of the way we moved inside our space. It had been our life for eight years. Our plan for more like thirteen years. And I like change. I embrace change. I daydream about change. But this threw me to the wolves. I couldn’t see clearly. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure after so long holding sure like a hostage in my tightening chest and it was frightening. I somehow thought our world was going to crumble. That things were breaking.

And yet, that isn’t all the way true. What I really knew, so very deeply, was that our world was going to expand. That breaking it was necessary to enlarge it. That we needed so desperately to move on. And, goodness, the world has grown and we keep growing and our farm is still here and we are still here. Growing food for our family, spreading compost out all over our beaten hearts and healing some of the parts of life that had, like much of our farm, been neglected and overgrown.

The story is so cliche it kills me.

Farming.

It is such good honest work. It means something know matter what. And it is also so fucking hard. The money is too thin and too bare even though you are putting your heart and soul into that dirt. The awareness of the true cost, the labor, that all food is born of, is mostly lost to really all of us, even my silly farm kids living this life. There is so much to write about this. How to make the small-scale sustainable farm sustainable, for the farmers? Nourishing and not depleting, for the farmers? So many pieces still to puzzle out in this movement. I have essays going and so much to say and so much I still want to discover about something I truly believed in and hate feeling jaded about.

But here we are in June. And after all that revolutioning, inside and out, we are basking for now in the glory. The glory of a new path. Writing about farming and gardening for my family, I can still do this. I can tell the stories that are mine to tell in the hopes that we all keep moving forward. Not just the small farm and farmer, but us, the people, connected here on earth through the clay that clings to our skin and through time and space by the crying or bubbling of the stars inside us. The threads woven by words told true and with an open heart have a power of their own. They create a net that can hold us all on this journey into a new world.

Because truly the world is burning right now, and we are all standing in the fire. I choose now to soften all the way, to bare myself, open wide, and write it all down to make sure we know it will be okay. It can be uncomfortable. It should be uncomfortable. But it can be okay. We are okay. More than okay, we are divine. We will always rise from the ashes.

Burned. Grown back. It happens, and we can fight it or find our selves more truly and lovingly inside the flames.

Here’s to new beginnings.

Let’s burn to shine.

Together.

]]>https://growingwildfarm.com/2015/06/18/burn-to-shine/feed/0growingwildfarmmay day, new beginningsmay day,new beginningsthick in the mystery of it allhttps://growingwildfarm.com/2014/10/12/thick-in-the-mystery-of-it-all/
https://growingwildfarm.com/2014/10/12/thick-in-the-mystery-of-it-all/#respondSun, 12 Oct 2014 18:33:46 +0000http://growingwildfarm.com/?p=2728Continue reading thick in the mystery of it all]]>Imagine, here, the longest, sweetest, exhale of all. Every bit of tension in the shoulders, the low back, the stomach, released. Summer has gone.

Not that fall doesn’t come with its own troubles, especially when big changes take place that land you, once again, (always, I worry), under the weight of financial stress. But the fog, the cool night air, it wraps its arms around me, this house, slowly finding order from the chaos of the busy farm season, the children, all of us, it seems, and there is a comfort there. We keep moving forward, truly we do, but always in our own slow, steady way, always coming back to our center, which revolves around each other, our relationships, our duty and care for one another. It is hard, at times, when I want things to be easy, but then I remember, it probably isn’t easy for anyone, life, not if you are actively engaged in the living of it, anyway.

But it is in those tough spots we rub up against throughout our lives that we usually find the most meaning, our own meaning, if we are looking for it. I’ve answered a million questions that stalked me this summer just by facing the fire of it all. And for someone like me, that’s what I am here to do, so I can be fully present and wide open to the flow of life through and around me, so I can be of use to this world in the ways that I find laid out before me.

What am I really rambling about, anyway?

So much, and so little, I suppose.

This year, this year of the horse, has been nothing short of the wild ride I could feel it mounting to be back in January. And as challenging as it was for me, for the people in my life I love most of all, and as challenging as it continues to be, I find the ride and all of the ups and downs that come with it all worth it all.

Because I can’t imagine it another way. Static doesn’t hold much appeal over here and besides, we know and hold onto the fact that there is no arrival, it is all about the movement and what we choose to do with the moment that matters in this game. So, worry and joy live side by side, trial and bliss. We keep moving because life is moving. We live fully in the fog in the fall, we face the sun in the summer. We stand in the fire come winter, so we can rebirth ourselves each spring. We grow, wild, here on this farm. Together, apart, thick in the mystery of it all.

Farming has shaped us both,
this land, and I.
It has shaped us into one word, on repeat.

Enough.
Enough.
Enough.

I load the tomatoes into the crates.
I haul in grace,
pound, upon pound, upon pound.

This deal we’ve made,
it is no small deal.
I can not wash the dirt from under my nail no matter how hard I try.

No.
It is no small deal.

Tender, tended. Provider, provided. I am not sure where I begin, where the Earth ends?

My skin is stained yellow.
I smell like tomato.
I feel that someday I will be
no more than
dirt.

]]>https://growingwildfarm.com/2014/08/17/swallow-the-dew-poetry/feed/3growingwildfarmsmall farm, farming, tomatoes, play, love, redemption, poetrysummer of dirty feethttps://growingwildfarm.com/2014/08/09/the-summer-of-dirty-feet-a-poem/
https://growingwildfarm.com/2014/08/09/the-summer-of-dirty-feet-a-poem/#respondSat, 09 Aug 2014 04:54:43 +0000http://growingwildfarm.com/2014/08/09/the-summer-of-dirty-feet-a-poem/Continue reading summer of dirty feet]]>You touch the one sticking out of the sheet,
searching
for a little relief, the cool of morning.
I feel you, feeling me
finding my dirty foot
turning you on,
the work these feet have done this year.

Of course, all things want to grow.
But we are prone to stagnate,
wilt,
even falter,
to save ourselves from the labouring,
to save ourselves from this contraction, and the next, and the next.
Afraid to ride these waves, unrelenting, never-ending.
We think it is easier.

But, here I stand, so dirty, worked hard,
stronger, better,
grown.

And even though I try to wash my feet before bed,
letting the mud of the tended soil
wash
away,
to come to bed clean,
to keep the night sacred,
to touch the holy space that is you and I, together,
with feet as clean as a Daughter of God,

most nights,
this year,
I forget.

But this summer of dirty feet,
and your touch, simple, gentle,
fully upon them,
it is all just about growing, right?

We can’t do anything else and survive.
And besides, this is all I have ever known how to do.

Perhaps you have wondered where I have been. Not here, no. But, under the sun, every day. It has been the strangest, hardest summer around in a while, and though the thorns have dug in deep, and I find myself living ahead of myself, my mantra almost every day, “next summer, next summer, next summer,” I come back around, always, by sunset. Then I remember, the plenty of good, too. We have gone to the river practically every day, the kids transformed into the most beautiful fish (and one mermaid). And I know that this summer is this only summer, so I don’t forget to let the smell of the blackberries, overripe from all the extra heat we’ve had in our normally more moderate clime, so sticky and tasting like kool-aid, I don’t forget to let this wash over me and sink in. I don’t ever want to jump ahead, I always want to feel it all. It always come around, like me with every sunset, to have been good in its way. I am always grateful, in the end.

]]>https://growingwildfarm.com/2014/08/02/blackberry-bramble/feed/2growingwildfarmfarming, challenges, family, summer, sunset, sunset, farming, summer, challenges, gratitude, joycucumber dreamshttps://growingwildfarm.com/2014/06/23/2683/
https://growingwildfarm.com/2014/06/23/2683/#commentsMon, 23 Jun 2014 16:11:22 +0000http://growingwildfarm.com/?p=2683Continue reading cucumber dreams]]>They say time flies when you are having fun, but really, after a certain point in your life, time flies no matter if you are having fun or not. I haven’t been able to get a blog post in since the first morning yawn of April. That is a long time ago. But no, really, it was just a blink of the eye.

I had planned on keeping everything under control this farm season, my house, my writing schedule, my mama-hood-y goodness. I would still make time for us to see friends. I wouldn’t have a mountain of crazy to uncover come late autumn, I wouldn’t disappear. I wanted to keep summer from barreling over us faster than we could keep the purposeful and intentioned steps of our feet on the ground. But summer. Farming. Maybe it isn’t really possible.

I am trying to be gentle on myself. I have these four children, and we are all in this together, and no matter how much of a super-human I feel like I am supposed to be, I am not. I am super, but I am also human. I feel compelled to do all these things, but I don’t see for a minute how I can do them all well. As the children get older, they find that just being on the farm and snacking on fresh food and having life be consumed by this one thing that is such a good, good thing, such a necessity in times gone, isn’t as enough as it once was. And I think–rather, I know–that I need a few more hands in the field and in the home and that my two are not as enough as they once seemed, either. And another summer is going to be gone before I know it. Another year. I don’t like the feeling of life controlling me, but perhaps all along I was wrong to think that I could control it. I feel a bit like a rock, stuck, wondering if there is really any purpose to this madness. I wonder, too much, perhaps, about everything.

So, I try not to. Instead, I get up, I walk the fields, my fields. The plants, my loves. I marvel at the coming abundance. I sweat, I ache, I let my body do what it was made to do. Move and work, provide. I think, on the summer solstice, of winter. It isn’t that far away. I let go a little, and let those vegetables wait while I find my breath and stay present with the kids, my dear sweet children. I want to fix what I perceive to be broken, but there isn’t a fix, not at this moment, not now, midsummer. So, I surrender as best I can, not knowing what to do, but doing the best I can for now.

I eagerly await the first cucumber. I will let it be divine.

It will be, divine.

]]>

https://growingwildfarm.com/2014/06/23/2683/feed/2growingwildfarmcucumber vines, beauty in nature, love, farmingFrom seed to seedhttps://growingwildfarm.com/2014/04/04/from-seed-to-seed/
https://growingwildfarm.com/2014/04/04/from-seed-to-seed/#commentsFri, 04 Apr 2014 15:50:18 +0000http://growingwildfarm.com/?p=2678Continue reading From seed to seed]]>The world around me is fully greening up now. It is a beautiful sight, all plant growth expanding, even though, as always, the wild plants and perennials take off infinitely faster than the wee little cultivated seedlings and transplants we have tucked into the fields ourselves. They are growing, certainly, but it is like watching the pot, so to speak. It is slow compared to our desire, and slow compared to the explosion of grass and weed that is so full of force and life in the spring by comparison.

Still, we have a good harvest coming in, the last push of the overwintered plants in the field are making florets now, giving us a whole other crop to eat, and the greenhouse bridges the gap by growing food fast enough while we wait for that same speed to issue forth out of doors. All green food, in spring, all great food. Spinach, lettuce, kale, turnip greens, and arugula. And wild harvests galore, because so much of the early spring weed growth is meant to be eaten, it’s true. Nettles, dandelion, wild mustard. I am making herbal vinegars with all these plants I need to pull up anyway, a nice way to hold onto all the goodness these wildings want to give away right now, even if they are growing in all the wrong places. Like we do, the earth and I, we are dancing together the dance of the season. Even the onions, right now, are green. And the garlic, too.

But it isn’t as easy to find that same green-ness in ourselves, not always, as we age, as life adds layer upon layer to our skin. I found myself in tears yesterday, in the wash station with this week’s spinach, because my oldest child is almost thirteen years old. That is only five years, by the books, five years, and there you have it, a childhood. And I know, I know, that it isn’t really left much, already, not truly even five years more. This slayed me, for some reason, out of the blue, while I worked, because his childhood is one of the most important things to me in the world.

It is so hard, this parenting gig, and I have done so many great things as a mother and so many things I wish I could take back. I started out thinking I would do everything right. I didn’t accept at all, on the outset, that life and love would be perfectly human, and that I too, must be.

But I know better than to let the sadness, the worry, wash me away, so I came inside and gave this young boy, on his way to young man, a hug. I let go. Letting go is all that we can do. Over and over and over again, the only way to keep moving forward. I have faith, too. That is just as important.

I never expect the earth to hold on to last season. I know, each spring, that we are on a new ride. Sure, I have lessons learned, I have new ideas, but that doesn’t mean it will be perfect this time round. And yet, I know, too, that I can just as surely count on things to grow, for food to be produced. The earth provides, every year, again and again, without any trace of growing older, without any hint of defeat. Without worry or weight, things just follow through, as best they can, from seed to seed.

So, must we.

]]>https://growingwildfarm.com/2014/04/04/from-seed-to-seed/feed/7growingwildfarmspring, farm, farm life, pride, ego, letting goabout (to bloom) the movement of gracehttps://growingwildfarm.com/2014/03/12/about-to-bloom-the-movement-of-grace/
https://growingwildfarm.com/2014/03/12/about-to-bloom-the-movement-of-grace/#commentsWed, 12 Mar 2014 16:13:26 +0000http://growingwildfarm.com/?p=2654Continue reading about (to bloom) the movement of grace]]>I took these pictures a few days ago. Already, these pink balls that dotted the limbs of this ornamental plum tree have opened, transforming in just a few days this image that caught me, the about-ness of it all so perfect and true.

Last week, we started back up with our farm harvests, started back at our farmer’s market. I waited until the very last minute to wrap my head around the changing schedule, our winter way so nice and restorative this year, but once I turned on the music in the wash station, cleaned and organized everything out there, started washing and weighing and gathering the produce together for our farm members and market customers, it all felt right. Saturday morning at the market, with all the fine people to see, the camaraderie, the community, and us a part of it, it fit back on like a glove.

Some friends and I have been having an ongoing discussion about the evolution of our understandings of the world and our spiritual place in it. About how learning to let go of the idea of keeping it all together ourselves, of the image of a perfect us or a perfect life, of the notion that we are in full control of this ship, how in this process of letting go and in finding the moment, we are finding more peace, more happiness, more power to implement real change, real transformations, and more love for life as it is, messy and beautiful and sad and wonderful all at the same time. Contrary to logic, somehow giving over power has this way of creating something really powerful.

One friend likened this to the idea of Grace, and I remembered back to when I was studying philosophy and literature in my college days. I read a lot of Christian writers, and I had an affinity for the beautiful way G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis understood their faith, so different from how I perceived it as a child, deathly afraid of the dark, already burning in the fire that is spiritual fear. That, for me, was no way to connect to the Eternal, so although I didn’t return to church, I did begin to appreciate the concept of Grace. I did begin to see that it was working in my life, that it always had been. Now, I am more apt to connect with this feeling during meditation, when always, the first sensation I notice is overwhelming gratitude, for all the things in my life, not just the good. Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve known keenly it was where I was supposed to be. If I paid attention. I always saw signs telling me that I was on the right path, always books came to me that I needed, always lessons that I needed when I might have lost track of my way, when I might have lost sight of the why of it all.

Always, moments of surety.

Like yes, on Saturday, when we returned to market farming for another season. Like yes, today, and every day, that I get on here to type.

Like a few days ago, on just another Sunday afternoon, while my children took the raft out into the flooded field and splashed in the mud and enjoyed their childhood and my husband wrapped me in his arms as said, “I love my life with you.”

Yes.

I couldn’t see it when I was growing up, my father was a No kind of person, but still this morning I listen to the music he handed down to me and because I am a Yes kind of person, I cry and wish for this perfectly imperfect man to still be walking the earth so I could share a cup of coffee with him and talk, like we always did, about how to be good and make the world right for everyone.

Sometimes I wonder why I should be so blessed, why I should feel that my life has meaning. The short answer is that I shouldn’t. None of us and all of us deserve everything and nothing at all. I haven’t had it easy, by any means, but I do have it great right now. And that is enough. Tomorrow is another day, and I can’t predict what is to come. I can’t make the good times stay. And that is okay, too.

The truth is, I have no answers, and I realize that I never have, only glimpses and movement, ideas that fit as my life continues on through its days. Perhaps the Truth, which I have always sought, isn’t something to be found. Maybe there are no answers to any of these larger than life questions, but I can’t stop asking them, and maybe that is enough for me to always find myself right where I am supposed to be, in both hard or soft times.

Right now, I find myself like the balls on this tree, ready to bloom into spring, then summer. The hard working, fast moving season on the farm. My body rejoices to be under the sun, in the dirt, eating fresh food. There are times in our lives that we can’t appreciate until we are well through them, the layers of meaning fully integrated, but this season isn’t like that at all, it is all feel-it-as-it-happens. Being right here, right now, that is my focus. I am sure I will have things to look back on that mean more to me in the future than they do now, but I am also trying my hardest to make all the meaning in the moment, too. And this one thing I do know to be true, I love my life, too. Graciously. That is one thing I can and will always try to do. Perhaps that is the thing that has made all the difference.